self sufficient life

The Growing Challenge – from seed to seed

Melinda, over at One Green Generation, has started a new round of The Growing Challenge. The goal of the challenge is simple: grow a new crop from seed, organically of course, and save its produced seeds for a new round of planting next year. Sounds simple, and it is, if you pick the right crop to plant.

I planted a lot of seeds yesterday: kohlrabi, strawberry, tomato, cauliflower, bell pepper and lettuce from seed packs that we already had. I also planted broccoli and basil from seeds that I saved from last years crops. I’ve planted tomatoes and basil from saved seeds before and they grew very nicely. If you’re new to seed saving, tomatoes and basil are probably the easiest to start with.

While waiting for the seeds to sprout, we are getting the greenhouse ready for planting.

Sterilizing seed starting soil

These past few weeks we have had snow and freezing nights, but also a couple of very sunny days that warmed our greenhouse up to 30 degrees. Spring is just around the corner, it’s still 3 weeks before it officially starts on March 20th but we’re close enough to start planning for planting. April and May are the preferred sowing months for most vegetable crops when growing outside, but we can start a lot earlier in the greenhouse.

Last year we had quite some weeds growing in our seed trays. Some where so badly infested that it was impossible to tell the weeds from the planted seeds, so I decided to try to sterilize the compost this time. After a little digging and sifting in our compost heap I got more than enough material to mix some seed starting soil. I mixed in about 30% peat and 5% coarse sand.

To sterilize the mixture it should be baked in the oven, the first try didn’t work out too well though. After sitting in the oven for well over 4 hours the center of my soil mixture was still pretty cold. This shows the great insulating capability of soil, a trade that is much appreciated by people building earth sheltered homes. What I did wrong was compacting the soil in the deep oven tray by pressing it down with my hands. By doing this I could fit al the soil I had mixed into the tray, wrongly assuming that this would be the way to sterilize double the amount of soil in the same time. The compacted soil, however, has a greater mass per volume unit and thus has a far better insulating and heat absorbing capability.

The mixed soil was far more than I needed anyways, so I gave it another try today. This time I made sure the soil in the baking tray was nice and loose. The soil should be a little damp and covered tightly with aluminum foil. A meat or candy thermometer will show you the temperature in the center of the soil. With the oven set to 90C (195F) It took about 4 hours for the soil to completely heat up to about 85C (185F) Maintain this temperature for another 30 minutes and the soil sterilization should be all done.

Be careful not to let the soil heat up beyond 95C (200F) or it will form toxins that will not be appreciated by your plants. Allow the soil to cool down and keep the foil on until you are ready to use it.

Water, just how much do we need?

I’ve been keeping an eye on our utility usage for the last couple of months, to keep track of what we use and see where we can, maybe, save a few bucks. I found our water usage rather disturbing.

Our water usage is a little over 400 liters (or about 110 gallons) a day. Our household supports two adults and two kids. Looking at the average water usage for Germany, which is just under 200 liters a day, per person, we aren’t doing too bad. Comparing our use to the 575 liters per person, per day, for the average US citizen and just under 500 liters for Australians, I’d say we are doing pretty damn good!

Still, 400 liters is a lot of water! This is not just plain water we’re talking about, it’s grade A drinking water that pours out of our tap. And how much of it do we drink? Let’s see, most of our beverages are bottled, so the only water we drink is what we use to make coffee and tea, maybe 2 liters a day, 3 liters tops! Add to that the water used for cooking and brushing our teeth, I’d say about 10 liters a day would be plenty of drinking water for our family of four.

The other 390 liters a day are wasted on showering, washing dishes and clothing and flushing the toilet. Now I would prefer somewhat clean filtered water to wash myself, my clothing and the dishes, but it does not have to be drinking quality. And to flush the toilet, just plain water from any river or creek or untreated rainwater would do just fine.

Since we have a huge rainwater tank (12.000 liters) I’m going to look into using some of that free water. I’m sure we are not paying to water the lawn next summer, but I’m also going to look into the cost and labor involved in using the collected rainwater to flush the toilets. That should save quite a few buckets of drinking water.

If you are interested in average per person water usage in different countries, have a look here

Winter composting

Most gardeners know that good compost is an invaluable addition to their garden soil and the avid gardeners I know all have a compost pile to make their own compost. Few, however, continue their composting during the winter months because they think the cold weather will grind all activity in the compost bin to a halt.

Yes, the composting process is a lot slower in winter, but the process doesn’t stop completely. Even if the temperatures drop well below freezing this winter, a little work and planning now will give your composting a head start once spring arrives.

Harvest your compost, so you have plenty of room in your bin for the winter composting. Since you will be mostly adding greens to your bin throughout winter, you’ll need some browns to keep the bin in balance, this is where all the leaves you raked up come in handy.

With a steady supply of fresh kitchen scraps, your compost pile should be able to keep itself fairly warm and do it’s thing. Some insulation around the bin can help to keep the temperatures up and speed up the composting process a little. While the best place for your compost bin in the summer is under some big trees, or any other shaded place to prevent the compost from drying out, in winter you’ll want to place it in a sunny spot, so the sun can warm up your compost pile.

What if you don’t want to move your compost pile or add insulation? Keep on adding your kitchen scraps to the bin and balance with dry leaves. When your compost pile completely freezes this winter, don’t worry, it’s a good thing! The freezing and thawing will damage the fibers in your soon-to-be compost making the breakdown easier once spring arrives.

Do you compost during winter?

What to do with all that basil

Do you grow basil on your kitchen sill too? Those little pots of basil that you can buy in most supermarkets are great if you only need a few leaves in a salad or for decoration, but if you let them grow, they can give you a lifetime supply of basil.

Once the basil plants grow big enough, they will start flowering and the flowers will produce seeds. You can see the seeds when the plant drops its flowers. Each flower usually produces four seeds, with a few dozen flowers on each stem, you can easily harvest a hundred seeds from a single stem.

After planting seeds that I harvested from a plant last year, I have also tried to propagate the plants by taking cuttings. The cuttings where a great success and I soon had more basil than we could eat in salads. As the plants where already flowering, I had to use the leaves before drying the seeds. I decided to make some pesto and it was good!

Here’s how I made the pesto:

Ingredients:

• a few hands full of chopped basil leaves.
• A clove of garlic
• A handful of cashew nuts
• Extra-virgin olive oil
• A little lemon juice
• Some pepper and salt

Pound the garlic, cashew nuts and basil in a pestle and mortar or use a food processor. Real pesto is made with pine nuts, but cashew nuts are a lot cheaper alternative often used in the pesto you can buy in a glass jar from the supermarket. Add a little olive oil until you have a consistency you like and add pepper, salt and lemon juice to taste.

The pesto can be kept in the fridge for a few days or you can freeze it. I use this pesto to make sandwiches, just smear a nice thick layer of pesto onto a slice of bread and top with turkey or chicken breast and tomato slices.

If you want to use the pesto with pasta, you can add a few handfuls of grated parmesan cheese, just stir it into the pesto. When storing the pesto in the freezer you should omit the cheese as it doesn’t freeze to well. Just add the cheese after thawing the pesto for use. Enjoy!

Worms in supply chain management

Summer was ending when we got the key to our new home and greenhouses. Heating the greenhouse this winter is really not an option because it will be too costly. Still, we didn’t want to wait until spring, so we quickly did some vegetable planting, hoping for a small harvest before winter really kicks in.

As we where running out of good soil for the planting I decided to try something different. We had some Styrofoam fish boxes laying around which looked like a perfect size planting container to grow some cucumbers in. The worms in the worm bin had not produced enough vermicompost yet, but I figured: why not let the worms continue their work while the plants are already growing?

So, I filled up the fish boxes 2 thirds of the way with a mixture of halfway done garden compost and the contents of my worm bin, including the worms. The boxes where toped of with some good soil. While the plants grow the worms should create a steady supply of worm castings.

Not knowing if this would work, I was pleasantly surprised by the growth rate of the cucumber plants. Now, six weeks later, the plants have grown nicely and are starting to develop fruits. This method of growing cuts out the work of having to harvest the vermicompost and the plants seem to like the steady supply of fresh nutrients.

I just found out that Compost Guy is doing the same, he calls it “Garbage Gardening”. I think if you want to sell your produce, a better term for this method of gardening should be used, as “Garbage Gardening” will probably not market very well.

Worm composting

If you want good soil for your vegetable garden, flower beds or potted plants, without having to pay for it, composting is what you should do. I’ve had a big compost bin standing in my garden for quite a while and it does a great job, but it takes ages to turn my kitchen scraps into good compost. These big compost bins rely on bacteria to break down the scraps and they will take between 6 months and a year before you can use the compost.

Worms however can compost a lot faster. While digging in my garden I found a good number of worms which I have added to my compost bin to speed things up. When I recently decided to move my compost bin however, I found no worms in it. After a few weeks of hot and dry weather the worms all dug down into the soil beneath the bin and where gone.

If you want to compost with worms, which is also called vermicomposting, you need a different kind of compost bin. A worm bin will have a closed bottom, so the worms can’t get out. You do have to drill a couple of holes into the bottom, so excess water can get out. You can use any type of plastic bin for worm composting, but ideally it will have a matching lid. Worms breath like all animals so you need to make sure they get enough air. A few slits or holes in the side of your bin will take care of the air circulation, but you want to cover them up with some screening to keep flies out.

Fill your bin about half way with moist newspaper or cardboard strips and add a layer of soil. If you have a compost bin you can probably find some worms in there or you can do some digging in your garden. You can also go the easy way and buy some composting worms in a garden center or order them online.

Keep your worm bin out of the sun and make sure it stays moist. The worms will accept temperatures between 10 and 30 degrees centigrade but will do best at around 25 degrees. Be careful not to overfeed the worms or your worm bin will start smelling bad. Don’t add any scraps until the last batch has been eaten completely and always burry the scraps you are adding. In time you will get a feel for the amount of scraps your worm bin can process.

Aquaponics Lettuce and Basil

My aquaponics system with expanded clay granulate is doing good. The lettuce I have planted in there hasn’t grown too much, but the plants are looking good and seem to start growing now. The reason why they haven’t grown until now is because there weren’t enough nutrients in the water. When you want to grow something in a new aquaponics system, you have to let the system mature for a while and give the nutrients time to build up a high enough level to sustain your plants. I’m the impatient type and can’t wait for maturing systems when trying new things, so I planted way too soon. Things are looking good now however, so it’s all good!

I have also put a cutting from a basil plant into the grow bed and planted some basil seeds. The cutting was cut from a basil plant that I bought from the supermarket and lives in my kitchen window. I just cut a piece and stuck it into the clay granulate. Two weeks later the cutting still looks good and it has grown some impressive roots! The basil seeds have sprouted too.

Aquaponics, take 3

With some help of the nice people over at Backyard Aquaponics, I now know why my tomato plant didn’t grow. The gravel I was using as grow bed medium was the wrong type of stone, probably limestone or marble. This caused the pH of the water to rise up to 9.0 and inhibit the plants nutrient uptake.

They say that lessons learned the hard way stick better, I agree. Before getting the next trunk load of gravel and take half a day of washing it and shoveling it into my grow beds, I will take a sample home to test. I’m quite sure I will not forget to do that!

Well, back to aquaponics, square one. I got a bag of Seramis expanded clay granulate to use as grow bed medium. This stuff is specially made for plants, so it should do the trick. It is a lot more expensive than gravel, but it has a few advantages: the very porous material is very lightweight and the capillary action will suck the water up for quite a few inches. Because of this it can be used in a constant flow system with a constant low water level, so no more messing around with loop siphons. I used a small square container as grow bed. A hole in one corner is covered with a drain sieve which prevents the clay granulate from washing into the fish tank.

I’ve planted some lettuce into the grow bed and threw some basil seeds in. Stay tuned for their progress!

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Compost vs. Aquaponics

Almost 4 weeks have passed since I set up my aquaponics system and planted a little tomato plant in there. Another seedling from a seed of the same tomato has been planted into compost which I have enriched with cow manure. The plan was to compare the total yield of both plants, but there is nothing left to compare.

The aquaponics plant has not grown at all in the 4 weeks. The only difference to how the plant looked 4 weeks ago is the color: the plant is now purple, which is a sign of not enough nutrients and too much water. I guess I planted too early. I will let the system mature a little longer and try again in about a month.

The plant in compost is doing very well. It has grown tremendously in the last 4 weeks and looks very healthy with juicy leaves and a thick stem. Even the Lego minifig I placed into the pictures for size comparison noticed the difference and wanted to stay in the compost veggie-garden.

For now the score is: Compost 1, Aquaponics 0. But I expect this to change once the system has matured…